


My family and other animals

by josephides



Series: Birds, Beasts, and Relatives [1]
Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs
Genre: F/M, Family Fluff, Gen, Humour, Very Little Redeeming Value
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:13:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25161424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides
Summary: She was a good hugger, his Aunt Leah. He remembered that. Always squeezed tight and didn’t stop rubbing your back. He’d liked that about her. All his dad had been able to do was tap him on the back, too afraid of hurting him.
Relationships: Bran Cornick/Leah Cornick
Series: Birds, Beasts, and Relatives [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2109591
Comments: 11
Kudos: 290





	My family and other animals

Clearing his throat, Roberto tried to speak without a tremor. “Do you… know my Aunt Leah?”

The big man picked him up by the back of his T-shirt. Roberto dangled, limply. This was not the first time a werewolf had done this to him. It wasn’t exactly comfortable but it would only get worse if you struggled, plus would ruin his T-shirt more than four solid days of wearing it had already done so. “Your… _aunt_?” he asked, red, clumpy hair dangling in Roberto’s vision.

“Yeah. Tall. Blonde. Kinda scary. Not that you’re not scary. You’re _very scary_.” Roberto had learnt through much trial and error that werewolves liked to have their scariness acknowledged and commented upon. Preferably in relation to other, scary werewolves. Sort of a competitive _Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?_

Big Man took a good sniff of him. “Smells like witch but not witch,” he muttered, almost to himself. With very little effort, he swung his arm and Roberto was suddenly tossed over his shoulder, dangling upside down now. The big man started walking.

“Not a massive improvement,” Roberto sighed, his chin bouncing off the rock-hard muscles of the man’s back.

But someone else was doing the walking for him, so that was good.

*

It was about an hour before Big Man stopped and put him down. “Stay,” he said, as if Roberto was the one who turned into a one-hundred-pound dog a few times a month. Though, he thought, this guy was probably heavier than that.

“Okay,” Roberto said, as big man bounded off into the bushes. He made very little noise for someone so loud, he thought, as the blood rushed back down from his head. He felt faintly dizzy.

He sat for a little while, twiddling his thumbs, and tried not to think about how hungry he was. As a distraction, he took his backpack off and started to go through the contents. His waterproof, a couple of pairs of used underwear, a biro, his toothbrush, an almost totally useless map of Montana, his beat-up copy of _The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe_ and his wallet. He’d eaten the last of the protein bars yesterday.

Big Man came back as he was reopening the book for perhaps the hundredth time. He was carrying two dead rabbits over one shoulder. Roberto stuffed everything back into his bag.

“Erm,” Robert said, as he was unceremoniously hoisted over the Big Man’s shoulder again, this time eye to eye with the dead creatures. Unfortunately, Roberto was very acquainted with dead creatures so this was hardly new to him. He closed his eyes. 

They all bounced along for another few minutes.

He knew they had reached their destination because the next time he blinked, the trees had disappeared and suddenly he was looking down at grass. The edge of a flowerbed. Someone’s yard, he thought, with growing excitement.

Big Man dropped him down unceremoniously and Roberto just about managed to save his neck by rolling onto his shoulder. Again, a well-practiced thing. He took a few moments to adjust and then sat up to see where he was. A big two-story wood-and-stone house looked back at him, with impressive large windows and a high, slate roof. And a perfectly average looking guy, in jeans and a T-shirt, with brown hair and clever eyes.

“Who’s this?” the guy asked Big Man. Then he sniffed and his eyes changed. Roberto froze. “ _Witch_.”

“He claims to know Leah. And yeah. But he’s just a kid, Bran.”

There was a small pause and a pair of sliding doors by decking at the top of the back yard opened and Roberto’s Aunt stepped out. She was carrying a mug that she put down when she saw him and started running.

Roberto scrambled up and made to run towards her, but the Big Man grabbed him by his T-shirt and yanked him back.

“Tag, get off of him!” Aunt Leah snapped, reaching them and grabbing Roberto, hoisting him up into her arms.

Roberto was ashamed to say that was when he started to cry.

*

He cried for a long time, so long that Aunt Leah eventually sat on the ground, pulling her into his lap. She was a good hugger, his Aunt Leah. He remembered that. Always squeezed tight and didn’t stop rubbing your back. He’d liked that about her. All his dad had been able to do was tap him on the back, too afraid of hurting him.

He was vaguely aware of the other two men, still present. The smaller guy – who was probably pretty average height really but was dwarfed by Big Man – was pacing.

When he was finally done, Aunt Leah stroked his head and pulled him back. “Hello, Bobby,” she said, smiling at him and wiping his cheeks with her thumbs.

Roberto tolerated being called ‘Bobby’ by one person and one person only. He sniffed and wiped a hand over the inevitable snotty nose. “Hi, Aunt Leah.”

“I think a shower. You smell, and I say this fondly, truly disgusting.”

“Leah,” the little guy – Bran – growled. He loomed surprisingly large in Roberto’s vision suddenly, like he’d just zoomed in with a camera and back out again. That sometimes happened to him with powerful werewolves. He rubbed his eyes.

Leah helped him to his feet, ignoring Bran. “He’s fine. He’s my nephew. Like he said.”

“He smells of _witch_.”

His aunt sighed and tugged him towards the house. “He would do. His mother is one.” 

*

Bran followed them, closely, into the house. It had a massive living room – with one of those couches that wrapped all the way around and could probably seat fifteen. There was a big TV, too, mounted on the wall. The biggest TV he had ever seen _in his life_.

“Woah,” he said, as they passed it.

“Yes. The sound system is pretty great too,” Aunt Leah said. Aunt Leah liked to watch movies. Whenever she had visited, they always watched movies together. She used to watch Disney movies with him but Roberto had grown out of those now. Mostly. 

She took him upstairs, down a hallway, and into a woman’s bedroom. He could tell it was a woman’s bedroom because the bed had ruffles and it smelled like flowers. The Bran guy followed them. He looked pretty pissed, Roberto thought. He got as close to his aunt as he could without actually hugging her legs.

“Okay, get in there, shower,” she said, gesturing to the open door of a bathroom. She pulled open a dresser drawer and then seemed to rethink it, looking at the other werewolf in the room. “Bran, can you lend him some clothes, please?”

They exchanged glares and then Bran turned sharply and walked through a door that connected the two rooms. He heard him slamming furniture drawers around.

Leah smiled down at him, encouragingly, as if an angry werewolf wasn't anything to be worried about. “Wash your hair and behind your ears,” she told him, lifting a finger to waggle it at him.

“I know how to wash,” Roberto muttered, taking off his backpack and handing it to her. “Can you look after this?”

“Absolutely,” she said, slinging it over her shoulder.

Bran returned, carrying some clothes. He handed them to Leah, who rolled her eyes and went to put them in the bathroom, on the toilet seat.

“Woah,” Roberto said, looking at the massive walk in shower and double basins. There was a bathtub with those scrolling feet and an actual armchair with towels rolled up, all fancy. “Are you a Kardashian?”

“We’ll be outside,” she said, snorting, closing the door behind him.

*

When he came out of the bathroom, wearing clothes that were way too big for him, his aunt was sitting at the end of her bed, staring out of the window. That Bran guy was standing in front of her, arms crossed, glaring down at her. They looked like they’d had a fight and neither had won.

“I’m done,” he said, unnecessarily.

His aunt gave him a soppy look and then came over and started to roll up the sweatpants at his ankle and then – really embarrassing – did the same thing at his waist. “I can do it,” he said, squirming.

She said something that wasn’t in English, or Spanish, and the Bran guy snorted, like he understood.

Roberto narrowed his eyes at her. “What did you say?”

“I said ‘men, they’re all the same’,” she replied, tweaking his chin. “Okay. Now that you smell bearable, and before my husband loses it completely, tell me what you’re doing here and why exactly it is that you haven’t grown even an inch in the last few years since I saw you?”

*

At some point during his story, Bran – Uncle Bran, Roberto guessed, though he’d had no idea his aunt was _married_ – had started rubbing his aunt’s back. They’d taken a seat at the end of the bed whilst he’d told his story, occasionally pacing, frequently hoisting up the too-long-legs of his borrowed pants.

When he got to the part where his grandfather had chopped off the head of his zombie-witch-mom, Aunt Leah had buried her head in her hands and Uncle Bran had started kneading her shoulders.

“It’s okay, Aunt Leah, she wasn’t really alive,” Roberto told her, sympathetically. “Even I knew that.”

Aunt Leah made a noise in her hands.

“Keep going, Bobby,” Uncle Bran said.

“You really can’t call me that,” Roberto said, because it was important to clear that sort of thing up quickly.

“I do apologize. Please keep going. Your grandfather just beheaded his daughter-in-law,” Uncle Bran said helpfully.

“Yes. Took her head off, totally clean. No blood. I guess zombies don’t have blood,” Roberto reflected. “Then he sent Uncle Alvero to go get some spades so they could dig a hole to put her in. And, then, well, Dad went kinda nuts. He tore the chains right off his arms and went for Lito and then they–” He flailed his arms, hands clawing at the air, trying to emulate the typical werewolf-in-human fight, many of which he had witnessed over his years. “Lito fought back but Dad… Dad was _crazy_. Like scary crazy. Uncle Alvero came running back and saw them and he grabbed me and started running back to the house.” He blew out a breath. “He told the new abuela to get me somewhere safe so I grabbed some things and she took me to a bus station and gave me a couple of a hundred dollars and told me to find you.”

He waved his hands as he reached his finale. “And here I am.”

Aunt Leah sat up with a deep breath, shoulders back, spine straight. “And how… exactly… did you get here?”

“Mostly the Greyhound.”

“They let a kid ride alone?” Leah asked, though it didn’t appear to be a question that needed answering because, well, here he was. Her next questions were better. “How did you find Aspen Creek? How did you know to _find_ me in Aspen Creek?”

Roberto made an ‘aha!’ noise because this was the clever part. “It was the book you lent me.” He pulled _The_ _Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ from the bag at her feet and showered her the inside cover, where a sticky label read: _Aspen Creek Church Library_. “And I knew it had to be in Montana because you said it was a couple of days’ drive so it couldn’t be the one in California and also you said you lived in the mountains, right?” He pointed to the illustration on the label, where someone had drawn the outline of a mountain range.

His Aunt Leah blankly stared at the book. Gently, Uncle Bran took it from him and flicked through the pages. “You came all this way, based on a label,” he mused. 

Aunt Leah’s mouth was a white, pressed line. “I’m going to kill your father. If he’s not dead already.”

Roberto was sadly of the opinion that the latter may well be the case. He’d had a lot of time to think about it.

His uncle started rubbing Aunt Leah’s back again. “All in good time. Have you read the rest of the series?” Uncle Bran asked, handing him the book back, his eyes alight with interest.

Roberto’s mouth dropped open. “There’s a _series_?”

“Yes, I’m sure I have it. Let’s go and see, shall we?”

*

Uncle Bran – who said it was fine, he could be called Uncle Bran – left him in a room with lots of books and _Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia._ He also brought him hot chocolate, a huge sandwich, and a plate of cookies. Half an hour after that, Aunt Leah returned with a large glass of milk and more cookies. She and Uncle Bran had been having an argument – he didn’t need werewolf ears to hear it.

“Why didn’t you want him to know about us?” Roberto asked, when Aunt Leah closed the door.

She sat on the floor next to him in front of the fire. “Uncle Bran doesn’t like witches,” she said.

Roberto knew his grandfather had been married to a lot of witches. Even the new abuela had been a witch, though she said she was a white one. His mother had claimed to be a white witch, as well, so Roberto knew to take this with a pinch of salt. Sucking energy from your son so that you didn’t die was probably not a white witch kind of thing to do, Roberto had reflected over the years. 

“Have you been married a long time?” he asked, curiously. 

“Pretty long.”

“Dad didn’t know?”

“No, it was really better that the family didn’t know who Bran was. It was wrong of me,” she sighed, though Roberto hadn’t heard her make that admission to Uncle Bran when they had been shouting at each other in the big room with the couches. Uncle Bran had been very insistent that she should have told him. She had yelled at him about a lot of things that Uncle Bran claimed were ‘irrelevant to the current situation’ which had apparently made Aunt Leah _very angry_. Roberto had been around adults who yelled at each other all his life – at least his Aunt and Uncle hadn’t started hitting each other.

Aunt Leah stroked his hair. “How’s the book?” 

Roberto clutched it against his chest. “It’s _even better_ than the first one.”

“I’m glad. You’re going to stay with us for a little while,” she explained, shuffling over to sit next to him, leaning against the couch. “Bran’s going to send someone to visit the family, see who’s alive.”

“You’re not going to go?”

“I would rather stay here with you, I think.”

He nodded. And leaned against her. “Aunt Leah, why haven’t you visited for so long?”

“It was difficult to get away and I didn’t realize… how badly things had gone wrong at home. I spoke to your Dad, occasionally, and he didn’t say anything. Didn’t tell me your mom had died. He said you were at school.” This last was delivered with a dark-sounding voice. “A boarding school. He said you were happy.”

Roberto snorted. “Some boarding school.”

His aunt kissed his head, suddenly. She made a sad little whine, the kind dogs made. His dad had made that noise a lot, after his mom died. “I’m so sorry, Bobby. I’m so very, very sorry.”

*

The bed Roberto slept in was so massive that he woke up a few times thinking he was drowning so he pulled the comforter onto the floor and slept under it instead. He woke really early but found so had Aunt Leah and Uncle Bran, who were downstairs in the kitchen not talking to each other.

“ _Uncle Bran_ ,” Aunt Leah said, sounding as if she thought it was funny that he was called that, “will make you pancakes.”

Uncle Bran didn’t look like he knew he was going to do that but he jumped off the kitchen stool and started to get busy.

Roberto climbed onto a kitchen stool himself and looked around the enormous, modern kitchen. In his house, they had a hole in the roof of their kitchen and a bucket to catch the rain. Their house was big, bigger than Aunt Leah’s, but really rundown and old. “Are you really rich, Aunt Leah?” he asked.

“ _I’m_ not,” she replied, pouring him a glass of orange juice. “Do you want bacon?”

If Aunt Leah wasn’t rich that meant Uncle Bran was. Roberto eyed Uncle Bran’s tensed back as he stood over the stove. “Yes, please.”

“ _Uncle_ Bran, Bobby would like bacon,” she said, in a funny, sing-song way, pulling the newspaper his uncle had been reading across the table.

Uncle Bran gave Aunt Leah a filthy look, which she ignored. Roberto grinned. “This is like being at home,” he said.

“Even from what little, _very little_ , I know, that’s an alarming prospect,” Uncle Bran replied, getting out another pan.

Aunt Leah ignored this. “Bobby, I’m going to go and get you some new clothes today. You can either come with me, which means you might have a say in what I buy you,” Aunt Leah said this as if that was unlikely, “or you can stay here and read.”

Roberto took a big gulp of juice, wondering what the not-rude way of saying what he wanted was. “Um.” 

“No contest, huh?” Aunt Leah said with a big grin. Roberto grinned back at her. She was the best. “Okay. You can stay here. I’m sure Uncle Bran will remember not to disappear and abandon you for priorities he considers to be more important.”

Uncle Bran made some loud, annoyed noises at the stove. The smell of bacon sizzling was making Roberto’s mouth water. “I don’t like yellow,” he said, suddenly. 

“Noted.”

“Also nothing with cartoons on it,” he added, because the new abuela had always bought him stupid clothes with cartoons on them like he was _actually_ the age his size suggested.

“Naturally. What size shoe do you wear?”

“I dunno.” He jumped down off the stool and went to where he had left them by the front door. Unfortunately, the label was so worn he couldn’t tell. He brought them back to her.

Aunt Leah held them with the tip of her fingers and pulled a face. “I guess I’ll… take it with me and see what I can find that’s… oh, good grief, please take it from the kitchen. That is _rancid_.”

Roberto snickered and did so. When he came back, there were fluffy pancakes being dealt out and bacon and he was handed a fork and a jug of syrup.

“ _So good_ ,” he said appreciatively, mouth full mere milliseconds later.

“Bobby, please chew with your mouth closed,” Aunt Leah said, flicking through the newspaper.

*

Uncle Bran came and found him, some hours after Aunt Leah had gone on her shopping trip. He was holding a cell phone. “I’ve just received a message to feed you,” he said, drily. He tilted his head to the side and looked at Roberto, sprawled across the insanely comfortable couch. “Did you fall asleep?”

Roberto rubbed what he was afraid was drool from his face. The book was still in his hand but he didn’t remember what page he was on or what had happened. “I think so?”

“It’s not a problem. Part of the recovery process,” Bran said. “Come on.”

Uncle Bran made burgers. Really big ones and a pile of fries that half filled his plate. Werewolves ate a lot and often forgot that because he was human – mostly – he didn’t.

They sat at the kitchen island and talked about World War II and Prince Caspian, the Saxons and the Normans, and the redemption arc of Edmund, Uncle Bran first explaining what a redemption arc was whilst Roberto shoved as much of the burger into his mouth as he could. Roberto was beginning to feel that Uncle Bran was very clever. Definitely cleverer than his dad or even Lito.

“When did your aunt last visit you?” Uncle Bran asked conversationally.

He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He felt like his brain had a work-out. “Four years ago. It was my birthday. Though I don’t think she knew it was my birthday. She gave me the book, then, and twenty dollars.” It had been the most money he’d ever seen in his life but the book had been more valuable to him. They hadn’t had many books in the house. Not whole ones, at least. His dad had destroyed quite a lot when he was on one of his rampages.

Bran dipped his fry into ketchup. “What did you do for your birthday?”

He thought back. “Um. There was cake. The old abuela made it but Leah told me not to eat it. She said it was wrong-funny.” Roberto had understood at the time that meant it was bad magic. It certainly made his uncle and dad behave weirdly, like they were all floppy and giggly. “We made cookies. Then we went on a walk. She asked me lots of questions. Then she beat up Uncle Alvero. It was the _best_.”

His new uncle grunted and licked burger sauce from his thumb, then went to get paper towels for them both. “Why was it the best?” he asked, sitting back down on his stool and handing a towel to Roberto.

“Because Uncle Alvero thinks he’s so cool and big and scary and Aunt Leah is just so much better. Even Lito said so. Not that he said she was cool. He doesn’t know what cool is. Just that she was ‘better’. Uncle Alvero hated that.” Roberto took a moment to cram five fries into his mouth in one go. He was starving. He was surprised how much he was eating, actually. Normally, werewolf meals like this one would defeat him. “She stayed for a few weeks. She gave me more money before she went.”

“And you’d seen her before that time?”

“Yeah, few times. I was younger, though, so I don’t remember much. We watched movies. She would let me ride her around on her back when she was a wolf, too.”

Uncle Bran choked on his soda. “She… did?”

“Yeah. It was fun.” He took a big bite of his burger and chewed. “S’really good, Uncle Bran, thank you,” he said because manners cost nothing. His mom had taught him that. Before she was a zombie.

“You’re very welcome, Roberto.”

*

Aunt Leah had bought him more clothes than he’d ever had in his life and then she made him _try all of them on._

“Really, Auntie,” he said, embarrassed, “I’m sure they’re all great. It’s no bother.”

“I want to make sure the jeans fit you properly. I don’t want you looking like a hobo,” she said, pointing to her bathroom where she expected him to get changed.

The first pair of jeans were a little long. He shuffled out.

“I can hem these,” she said, confidently. She was kneeling on the floor and leant down to fold the ends of his jeans. “Then I can pick it out when you grow.”

“You think I’m going to grow?” Roberto said, hopefully.

“Bran thinks so.” She paused in that way werewolves did when they sensed something. “Don’t you?”

Uncle Bran stuck his head between the doors that connected their two rooms. Roberto’s mom and dad had shared a room when they’d both been, respectively, still alive and not crazy, but his aunt and uncle were rich enough to have a bedroom _and_ a bathroom each. “Yes,” he said. He looked at Roberto and smiled. “I like the T-shirt.”

The T-shirt had a logo on it. “It’s Batman,” Roberto said. Aunt Leah had said that she wasn’t sure if that broke the cartoon rule but he was confident that Batman was always okay.

“It’s very cool.” Bran’s head disappeared.

Roberto thought for a bit. “How old is Uncle Bran?”

“A million years old,” Aunt Leah said, sitting back and surveying him, looking pleased. “Okay, go try another pair on. Try not to undo the folds or I won’t know where to hem them.”

A million. Wow. Roberto knew that werewolves could get old but that was _a lot_. He wondered if Uncle Bran had seen dinosaurs. 

*

“No dinosaurs,” Uncle Bran said the next day, when he asked at breakfast. Aunt Leah wasn’t up yet – Uncle Bran said she’d been kept up all night, because Bran had been bothering her, and he smiled when he said it, like it meant something more interesting than it sounded, not like they’d maybe had some kind of mild argument. “Your Aunt Leah was making a humorous comment about my age by exaggerating it.”

“Oh. Okay.” This was disappointing. “Are you older than Lito, then?”

“I don’t know much about your Lito so I couldn’t really say. Why don’t you tell me about him?”

Roberto shrugged. “He said he was pretty old. He said he was a knight, once.”

“Oh really. What kind of a knight?”

“He said he had a sword and chainmail and a shield with a big cross on it. Um.” Roberto paused, wanting to be truthful. “My mom said Lito sometimes gets confused about things, though. So maybe he made that up.”

“Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. Did your mom know him well?”

“Pretty well, I think. She was the daughter of my old abuela. So he helped raise her.” He spooned a big spoonful of the chocolate cereal into his mouth. It was at the good, squishy stage now.

Uncle Bran patted his shoulder. “She and your Aunt must have known each other, too, then. Before you were born.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He shrugged and ate some more cereal, thought about it. “She argued with mom, when she was home last, as well.”

“Do you remember what about?”

“School and stuff. She said she’d pay for me to go to boarding school. Mom didn’t want me to. She liked having me at home.”

Bran nodded. He had a bowl of cereal too but it wasn’t the chocolate kind. He’d put banana on it. Roberto hated bananas and so did Aunt Leah. “So, your grandfather liked to marry witches. I wonder if your Aunt Leah and Uncle Alvaro’s mom was a witch.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Roberto shook his head. “There’s a big portrait of her and Aunt Leah and Uncle Alvero when they were kids in the portrait gallery. She had a big cross and was holding a bible. I don’t think witches were that religious.”

Aunt Leah walked into the kitchen and gave them both a stern look. “No, they weren’t. My mother,” she said, directing the sharpness of her voice towards Uncle Bran, “was a devout Catholic who thought we were all demons sent to personally torment her.” She smiled. “Which, perhaps we were. So no worries there, husband of mine.”

Bran ate his cereal, meekly. “I wasn’t worried, wife of mine. I’d love to see this portrait, however.”

“I’m surprised it survived the succession of bi—“ Leah glanced Roberto’s way. “The succession of women my father married.”

“Well, someone did curse it so that it screams at full moon,” Roberto said, picking up his bowl to drink the chocolate milk.

Leah laughed and started making herself a coffee. She pinched up the banana peel Uncle Bran had left on the table with a disgusted look and dropped it into the trash. “Did they? That’s hilarious. We should get it and put it in the downstairs bath.”

*

“So, Roberto,” Bran said, and it was a serious chat because both of them had sat down on the coffee table opposite him. “We’ve managed to get hold of your family. Your Lito and Uncle are fine.”

Roberto saw where this was going. “Oh dear,” he sighed, regretfully putting aside _The Voyage of the Dawn Treader._

Though he was looking at Roberto, Uncle Bran put his hand on Aunt Leah’s back and rubbed it up and down like he’d done before. They seemed on better terms now. He’d seen them kissing that morning and had made himself scarce because it was the kind of kissing that led to lying down activities. “I’m sorry. Your father is dead. He was, by all accounts, made quite mad by the death of your mother.”

“He was pretty crazy. He stayed in his wolf form for months.” Roberto picked at the seam of his new jeans. Leah had hemmed them for him and they fit perfectly now. They were probably the nicest clothes he’d ever had. “He wasn’t really like my dad any more.” Much like the woman in the woods hadn’t been like his mom. Just this crazy-eyed sack of bones who called to him in the dark and made him feel tired and sick when he was near her. He felt his eyes prickle with tears. It was okay to cry, he told himself, when you found out you were an orphan.

“We’ve suggested to your Lito that you might stay here with us, to recover from your mother’s workings,” Bran said, gently.

Leah moved to come and sit next to him. She put her arm around him. She smelled like lemon verbena. “If you’d like to. If you want to go home—“ Roberto shook his head quickly and she stopped talking. He felt her fingers gently touch his hair. “I’d love you to stay,” she said, quietly. “It’s nice to have my own family around. And you smell significantly better now that you wash daily and we burnt your old sneakers.”

He laughed and wiped at the tears that were running down his face. “Thanks.”

“We can get you a smaller bed, too, and then maybe you can start sleeping on it.”

“It’s like fighting a cloud,” he confided to her, losing the battle with his tears.

She gave him a hug, one of the good ones, squeezing him tightly so that he could mush his face into her sweater and let it deal with the tears. He felt Uncle Bran stand and he pressed one hand against Aunt Leah’s head, another against his own. Roberto’s blood tingled. Uncle Bran was witchborn, too, he realized. He sniffed.

“Let’s have some celebratory ice-cream sundaes,” Uncle Bran said, decisively.

“No banana,” he and Aunt Leah chorused.

“ _I_ _know_.”

**Author's Note:**

> And they lived happily ever after.


End file.
